Up in smoke
After wildfires forced the cancellation of the Fat Dog 120, Jenny Quilty put together and epic bike-and-run adventure in the Chilliwack valley
Written by Cam Fenton. Photography by Lukas Mann.
Jenny Quilty could feel it coming. She had been keeping up her training and preparation, but with every new fire start, the race seemed more and more in doubt.
“Leading in, it seemed 50/50 just because of the locations of some of the fires,” she said.
Then it happened. On July 30, the organizers of the Fat Dog 120 cancelled their iconic 120-mile trail race through E.C. Manning Provincial Park. Five wildfires had started in the park in the weeks leading up to the decision, including, the organizers explained, “less than 500 metres from the course.”
BC Parks closed portions of the Manning Park trail network, and smoke clouds triggered air quality warnings throughout the region. Without any significant weather changes on the horizon, the choice was all but made for them.
“We know how much time, training, travel, and anticipation have gone into this event, and we share in your disappointment,” a statement from the organizers explained. “Many volunteers, supporters, and team members have dedicated countless hours preparing for race day, making this decision especially painful.”
Quilty, who was planning to race Fat Dog and was coaching several other racers she works with as clients, felt the pain and frustration of the decision.
“After having raced around the world, Erik [the race director] and his team do more than most races in the world to put on a good event for their athletes,” she said. “One of the things I saw with all my athletes that were going to race Fat Dog, every single one of them wrote, ‘I just feel so bad for Eric; he put in so much work.’ That is not a normal response when a race gets cancelled.”
Part of that work is the physical effort of opening up the Manning Park trails every spring. Fat Dog racers are required to either volunteer eight hours to a trail-building effort or to make a $120 donation to the Fat Dog trail work fund. Racers can volunteer wherever they live, but Fraser Valley locals are encouraged to join in with work in the park. Work that, just this year, was critical for opening up trails not just for runners, but for backpackers and hikers.
“[They] cut almost every tree,” Quilty, who tracks race director Erik Bird on Strava in the spring to see what trails he recently cleared, said. “Without exaggerating, it's probably close to 10,000 trees, because there are around 300 a day, and they do it for months.”
A plan comes together
Like many racers, Quilty was disappointed when the Fat Dog was cancelled. She had won the race in 2025 and set a course record. This year, she was aiming to set another fastest-known-time and, when the race was cancelled, “didn't really have any backup plans in mind.”
What she did know was that she “wanted the big adventure.” From that, an idea started to blossom.
“I wanted the overnight adventure because I love that part of racing 120 miles, “ she said. “I wanted a big mountain weekend, so I thought, okay, what in the Chilliwack River Valley could take up to 24 hours? That's the foundation of the plan.”
A plan that came together on a scrap of cardboard that Quilty called her “official planning document.” It laid out a route that would link up three peaks, Flora, McGuire and McFarland, in the Chilliwack River Valley. Most days, any one of these would be a worthwhile day mission. But Quilty wouldn’t just run them all in a day; she wanted to bike between them.
“I've been doing a lot more like gravel biking alongside my trail running, so it felt like a really unique opportunity to move in the area through various modalities rather than just being specific to trail running, which I usually am,” she said.
She planned to start at midnight and recruited another local runner and outdoor athlete, Lukas Mann, to join.
“I asked Lukas if he would do the night start and then as much of the day as he wanted,” she said. “He ended up doing the whole thing with me.”
A big day in the valley
On the day that Quilty would have started the Fat Dog, the skies over Chilliwack were clear. Winds had been pushing in from the Pacific for the week, pushing wildfire smoke inland to, among other places, Manning Park. Mann and Quilty started from the Garrison neighbourhood, near Mount Waddington’s Vedder Road location, and started biking.
“Funny enough, neither Lukas nor I had ever biked to the lake,” Quilty laughed.
The ride took them just under two hours. From there, their first summit, Flora, was a 14-kilometre, 1400 meter round trip. At the bottom, another friend of Quilty’s who had previously signed on to support her Fat Dog race met them with water refills and snacks.
“She brought me some chow mein because that's what I thought I might want in the morning,” said Quilty. “I turned out I didn't want it.”
Then it was back on the bike for the ride to McFarland, another thirty minutes down the road. They arrived at the second trailhead around 6:30 in the morning and met another crew of local runners.
“I had a coffee and a Snickers,” Quilty said. “Then reset my pack with more gels.”
McFarland was nearly 20 kilometres and 1900 meters of elevation. McGuire, the next peak just a little up the road, was closer to 30 kilometres and another 1800 meters of elevation.
“We did a very short bike ride to McGuire,” she explained. “We didn't even change back into our bike shoes. It was 5 kilometres down the road, so we just stayed in our run gear.”
They met another crew of friends at that trailheard and tracked down an impromptu aid station.
“A little stash of cold Coca-Cola at the river,” she said. “So we just sat in the river drinking Coca-Cola on the way up and down. It was fantastic.”
From the bottom of McGuire, it was about 45 minutes back on the bikes. Quilty made it home by 8:30 p.m, about 19 hours and well over 100 miles of biking and running later.
The mother of invention
For Quilty, being able to come up with a new adventure when the Fat Dog was cancelled felt like a privilege. She explained that, while she had been training for the race, that training would carry over to other efforts. And though she was disappointed not to run the Fat Dog this year, living so close to the course meant it wasn’t like she wouldn’t have another chance. That, sadly, isn’t the case for everyone.
“[There are] people who, with their family or with their travel or with their budgets, this was their go at Fat Dog. I feel a lot of devastation and loss for those folks,” she said.
And it’s not just happening with Fat Dog. In the weeks since that race was cancelled, Quilty says that she “can consistently name a race each week that has been cancelled.”
“They are all 100 milers,” she said. “They’re all in the Pacific Northwest, and they're all on fire.”
As a coach as well as a runner, she knew some of these races were what her clients were training for. And it’s not just fires cancelling races causing issues there.
“I have athletes right now in Revelstoke, who are racing in Europe soon, who have been going inside and doing a mix of treadmill and stair stepper,” she said. “That's hard for trail runners; being told to go to the treadmill really sucks.”
For Quilty, it all helps to keep things like having to change her own running goals in perspective.
“I'm more sad for the forests and the race and the general state of things than my personal loss,” she said. “I live somewhere where I could pivot and do something else instead, and that's really special.”
It’s why she thinks that while the adventure in the Chilliwack River Valley wasn’t exactly a replacement for the Fat Dog, it was special in its own right.
“With things like races, they offer us such a unique experience to push ourselves and perform a certain way,” she said. “Races have allowed me to go to certain areas that I wouldn't be able to without support, and now I feel like I'm starting to unlock this next part of my athletic and endurance mindset: where can I go self-supported because I know how, and I have these different ways of going even further.”
At the time of writing this, five wildfires continue to burn in and around Manning Park, closing a number of trails. The Skagit Valley is also inaccessible due a fire near Hozomeen and a number of trails on the Coquihalla Summit have been closed due to fire risk. The province has also banned off-road vehicles in areas with high fire risk. Obviously, the impacts this has on outdoor recreation is a small part of a much bigger crisis with thousands of people evacuated across the province. You can read more about how to support wildfire evacuees here.
If you want more information about how fires or smoke could impact your summer adventures, this piece explains what you should look for in planning adventures during wildfire season. Want more information on adventures in the Chilliwack River Valley? Come visit us in either of our Chilliwack shops.
